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12th PA Secure Steering Group Meeting

On 26-27 November 2019, the Policy Area Secure Steering Group met for the 12th time. The meeting took place in Stockholm at the CBSS Secretariat’s premises. Representatives from the seven EU Member States form the region, Swedish Police and the Union of the Baltic Cities (Safe Cities Commission) took part in the meeting. Traditionally, the meeting started with the Policy Area Coordinators informing the Steering Group about the activities and project updates since the last meeting in May 2019.

Among others, the participants were informed about the progress in the Interreg Project Platform ResQU2, PA Secure flagship FIRE-IN and the ongoing consultation process aimed at organizing a consortium of practitioners and researchers in societal security for a new project. The latest report “Sendai Framework in the Baltic Sea Region: Challenges – good practices – way forward”, elaborated by the CBSS Secretariat’s Civil Security team within the CASCADE project, was also presented.

Later, in an interactive workshop, the participants provided their ideas for the PA Secure contribution during the next EUSBSR Annual Forum, which will take place in Turku in June 2020. Several concrete event proposals came out of the workshop with themes ranging from protection of cultural heritage from disasters to preparing for massive electricity “blackout”.

Following the updates on the implementation of the Joint Position on Enhancing Cooperation in the Civil Protection Area, the Steering Group members discussed the potential of using Finnish security portal “Tuovi” as a communication tool for the Steering Group and listened to the report about the Baltic Excellence Programme, organised by the Danish Emergency Management Agency in Tinglev in November 2019.

Marianne Stålheim, a representative of the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency, reported on the recent workshop on evidence-based fire safety, which took part in Karlstad in October 2019  and Jacek Paszkowski from the Swedish Police updated the Steering Group about the progress of the Goldfinger project.

Zhanna Kravchenko from Södertörn University presented a course “Transnational Public Administration in the Baltic Sea Region.”

The Steering Group members positively evaluated the Seminar on the concept of ”Societal Security”, which was organised back to back with the Steering Group meeting. The discussion concluded with a decision to continue organising seminars/workshops on different topics, related to the activities of the PA Secure, back to back with the Steering Group meetings.

Finally, the Policy Area Coordinators informed the members of the Steering Group of the results of the PA Secure Stakeholder Survey 2019 and led a discussion on the revision of the EUSBSR Action Plan and the steps PA Secure shall take to submit an updated Action Plan in time and according to the EU Commission’s requirements.